Epilogue
Dominick flew the helicopter back to the hotel. Wrecked, it looked like the center of a war zone. Not too far from the truth. Various sections of the building blazed or smoldered, and an entire wing of it had cracked open like a clam shell.
The fence remained intact except for a few sections that someone had cut through. It looked like the building had power, but only minimal and, probably, that came from a backup generator. The bodies of the mercenaries they had hired over the last several months to keep them safe lay littered around the guard posts.
Somewhere inside the building, an alarm blared in useless warning of an attack.
Haatim, in the copilot’s chair next to him, looked exhausted and beaten down. Frieda still just sat and stared through the window in the back, her expression unreadable while she surveyed the devastation.
Dominick had radioed ahead multiple times to try and raise a response. He had prayed that someone might have survived the attack, but so far, no answer had manifested. He landed the helicopter, and they stared at the demolished hotel for a few minutes.
“We need to check,” Frieda said.
“You know what we’ll find,” Dominick said. “Maybe, we should just go.”
“We need to know for sure.”
He let out a deep breath. The storm didn’t seem as bad here, but it still snowed heavily. With the engines off, they climbed out of the helicopter and headed toward the wrecked building to search for survivors.
An endless sea of bodies waited outside, murdered and left out in the snow. He hated leaving them like this and knew they would need to gather them in the morning, once the storm had moved through.
Frieda followed him into the main lobby, and Haatim wandered around the side of the building. Dominick thought to stop him but decided to let him go on his own. Probably, the guy just needed a few minutes to wrap his head around it all.
They all did.
Dominick went upstairs. Many of the Council had died in the firefight, but many more had only been wounded and then summarily executed. He moved through the building into the sections not on fire and looked through all the rooms in which the Council members had stayed.
Some had been executed in their sleep. Others had tried to fight back and escape, but they all lay dead.
He found Frieda down in the lobby. She looked devastated and hardly able to stand. Was it from the blood loss, the exhaustion, or the emotions of seeing her entire life’s work and her friends and family all dead around her?
Probably all three.
“Six Hunters left in the world,” she said. “Counting you. I’m the last Council member.”
“I’m not done searching,” Dominick said. “I’ve only accounted for ten.”
Frieda looked at him, her expression one of sheer devastation. “Do you think you’ll find any more?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “How was this possible?”
She could only shake her head in response.
Dominick couldn’t believe the sheer destruction of what had taken place. Whoever had planned this, had been incredibly thorough. He’d known many of these people his entire life and had thought the Council could never be brought down, let alone so quickly and efficiently.
“This is insane,” he said.
“I know,” Frieda said. “We lost everything.”
“We have a lot of funerals coming up.”
“Those will need to wait,” Frieda said. “This isn’t over.”
“You think Nida will come back?”
“I know she will. Whatever she’s planned, this is just the beginning.”
“What do we do now?” Dominick asked.
“Rebuild. Call in every favor owed. Find every friend we can. Prepare for what’s coming.”
“And what is that?”
Frieda looked at him and sighed. “War,” she said.
Dominick looked at the ruins around them, smoldering in the snow.
“It isn’t coming,” he said. “It’s here already.”
Haatim found his father’s car on the south side of the building, near where the explosion had taken out a huge section of the hotel. The door leading inside hung open, and a ramp led down into a storage room, where he found the bodies of several soldiers scattered.
Some killed by the impact of the explosion and others filled with bullet holes. A few small fires still burned in the area, filling it with smoke that poured out of cracks in the ceiling.
He stood there, listening to the crackling of the flames and trying to come to terms with everything. So many people dead. Unfathomable. Only just introduced into this world, and already, it had turned on its head.
Abigail gone. Too difficult to process. Even with how much he’d worried about her possible execution these last months, he’d never imagined what it might feel like to lose her.
The worst part about it was that he’d never, in fact, had her. Different from anyone he’d ever met, he cared more for her than he’d believed he could care for any human being. Too late to tell her, he realized just how much she meant to him.
Now she’d gone, and he stood alone in the world.
A noise came from further in the room. A dragging sound. Haatim looked around. A pistol rested against the wall. He picked it up and edged his way through the dim space, searching for whatever had made the sound.
He came upon it around the corner, tucked behind machinery. His father struggled to drag himself across the floor with one arm, and his other shoulder hung twisted and broken. Though bloody and weary, his eyes flashed when he saw Haatim standing in front of him.
“My son,” he said, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He smiled. “Thank God, you’re here.”
Haatim stared at him, feeling a mounting rage in the pit of his stomach. “You did this,” he said.
Aram’s smile faded. “I tried to stop this—”
“It’s your fault. You got them killed. You got them all killed.”
The words spilled out, and he took a menacing step toward his father. His hand squeezed the grip of the gun, and his father seemed to notice it for the first time.
“Haatim, please … think this through.”
“I am.” He raised the gun. Never in his life had he felt such fury. Could he pull the trigger and take his father’s life? He wanted to.
And, his father deserved it. After everything that had happened, he shouldn’t be the only one allowed to survive. Moreover, if he shot him now, it would look like just one more dead body. No one would ever know what he had done, and it would serve to balance the scales.
Justice.
“You got her killed.”
“Haatim, please.”
Haatim hesitated, struggling to decide whether or not to pull the trigger.
